Fox News Pays Almost $800M To Settle Dominion Defamation Law
Fox, to pay $787 million to settle election suit, Dominion says.
This is a Bloomberg story.
Fox News has agreed to pay $787 million to settle Dominion voting system defamation lawsuit
when alleged that the network aired bogus claims that Dominion rigged the 2020 election
against Donald Trump.
Evidence uncovered in the case showed that Fox News executives and top hosts like Tucker
Carlson privately derived the conspiracy theory as loony even as they promoted it.
The settlement ends the possibility of a trial in which Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox
Corp and his son, would have to testify about the oversight of the network's new presentations.
The settlement allows Fox News to avoid having to flatly apologize, which means neither Tucker
and the other folks won't have to apologize.
Fox News Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity won't have to apologize on air about Dominion.
The hosts will avoid being grilled on the witness stand and won't have to issue restrictions
or make any other statements on TV, even though the network acknowledged false statements
were broadcasted.
The falsehood claims that Dominion made by then-Trump lawyer Giuliani and Sidney Powell,
who appeared as guests on several Fox shows, pushed a false conspiracy theory about Dominion
from Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
By the way, this is a very, very big news.
So here's the problem with things like this.
I'll give you my feedback and then we can process it together.
My problem with something like this is, one, I love the fact that there is a form of accountability.
The slippery slope is, anytime a lawyer has a case that becomes a precedent and that's
the standard, well then guess what?
Everybody else is getting a phone call.
When these guys indicted Trump, what they don't realize they did, for the next 300 years,
if there's still a country here, Republicans will always be able to say, the first president
that was indicted was by the Democrats.
So if a future Democrat tries to say, this is not a good look for the country, we look
divided to the enemy, hey Democrats, you started it.
And forever they're going to be able to say that.
You impeached a guy two times and nothing happened just because Nancy Pelosi celebrated
the fact that they impeached him, just to humiliate him, is what they did.
Now they may say, well what do you mean he humiliated us for calling us fake news?
He wasn't wrong.
You were fake news.
You said Russia, whatever.
Is there a lawsuit with Russia for you?
So this may cause Trump to go sue CNN with Russia and MSNBC, and then his lawyers may
say, well look, if you did Dominion, you did this to my career, you cost me this much money
with my businesses, my numbers happened, this, that.
There's a lot of things that this, if this is happening right now with Fox, guess who's
worried?
CNN is sitting there saying, oh, NBC is sitting there, ABC is sitting there, Morning Joe is
sitting there.
All of these guys are sitting there, as much as they're so happy, because this is such
an in-your-face, you know, this is kind of like, you know how a sports team dominates
everybody in a league and they hate them and then finally something comes out, the Flategate.
I told you, I knew New England Patriots couldn't win.
And then New England Patriots comes back and wins again and again.
I told you the Astros cheated, and then they come back and they win.
I told you this.
So there's an element of that that's happening today where everybody on the mainstream media
is celebrating this, having drinks, getting cameras, this is the biggest party they're
having to celebrate this, but I think there's going to be more things that's going to backfire
with this.
Tom?
I'll tell you who I don't, I actually believe that MSNBC and NBC and Brian Roberts at Comcast
have been remarkably quiet on certain parts of this.
I think they're concerned and I'll tell you why.
If you go take a look at the Steele dossier and what Rachel Maddow did on MSNBC, it's
exactly what you said.
I would be on Trump's side lining up at her door because the Steele dossier and everything
turns out also fake, also was wrong.
And so duck.
And I think MSNBC probably doesn't like this precedent because of the way that they played
Russia and the Steele dossier.
To pick one, just one.
Yeah.
Well, I'll give you my little two cents right here.
Well, obviously this is the number one story across every single cable news outlet, except
for one.
Yeah.
Take a wild guess who's not really covering this story.
CNN?
No, Fox.
How about that guy?
Yeah.
Well, as it turns out, you know, we can go down the list of CNN and MSNBC, fake news,
Russia, scandal, Ukraine, impeachment.
The list is too long.
Turns out it takes two to tango.
And it turns out Fox News is peddling fake news stories as well or else they wouldn't
settle for $787 billion.
Million dollars.
Still a lot.
The lawsuit was one point, I think $6 billion.
They settled for half, $787 million.
By the way, guess how much cash they have on hand.
How much?
Take a guess.
So we just established that, what, Berkshire Hathaway has a hundred billion?
Yeah.
2.1 billion.
My numbers show $4 billion.
Okay.
There you go.
Okay.
So what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is they've had to give up 20% of their cash on
hand.
That's a lot.
This is no joke, guys.
Fox News, this is not a good look for Fox News.
The biggest question is how will this affect 2024?
Fox just paid the price for this.
They avoided Tucker and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity and all the cohorts having to
basically be show ponies in a trial so that they avoided literally getting egg on their
face.
They didn't have to apologize.
They didn't have to admit guilt.
They didn't have to give accountability.
They just had to pay $787 million.
I apologize for saying B earlier, but this is not a good look for Fox News.
But this will go back to three things.
Again, the same things that the Democrats, I won't say won while they didn't lose the
midterms.
The same three things.
Election denial is not a winning message.
News flash to Donald Trump.
Stop it.
It cost you in the midterms.
It just cost Fox News, you know, three quarters of a billion dollars.
This is not a winning message.
Drop it.
Win on your merits.
Win on your policies.
Win on the shit show that is Joe Biden.
Win on that.
Stop being a victim and say the truth and win on that again.
Because saying that I really want it and it's all fake news.
Well, it's not a winning message.
Clearly.
I mean, it just sucks for him because that sucks for him.
But I mean, can you blame somebody like Trump not trusting the same people that did all
these investigations and all this?
But in dominion with the Democratic Party, I totally understand that.
But Pat brought this up with Rudy Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani on the podcast the other day
It's like, OK, so let's say you can't trust the system.
Let's say you can't trust the voting machines.
Let's say you can't trust government.
What happens?
We saw what happened in Georgia.
You encourage people to do what?
Not vote.
OK.
And that's why Georgia picks up two Senate seats and you end up flipping the Senate because
you're encouraging your base not to come out and vote because you can't trust the machine.
This is a losing message.
This is something we never got behind.
I mean, we listen.
We interview everybody.
I don't care who you are.
Well, I'd love to have Robert Reich on.
He won't show up.
We'd love to have Bernie Sanders on.
I'm telling you, they won't show up.
We've had all the guys that people have no idea you would never have Gen Con.
We had him on.
You'd never have David Patten.
You'd never have Kyle Kulinski.
You'd never have Sam Seder on.
And then, you know, by the way, you know, on Twitter, they no longer say you would never
have because we have.
You would never have this.
We don't mind sitting down having a conversation about this.
We even had Dinesh D'Souza on, I think, at one point.
We did have Dinesh D'Souza.
But to me, this is concerning in a different way.
It's not at all a way of like what people are thinking.
You know, this is a completely different way.
I think when Alex Jones was sued for however much money, the money was, that's a very,
because what it makes people do, I mean, if you think about this, fine, dude, for how
many years did CNN, MSNBC talk about Russia?
How many years was it?
Huh?
They still talk about it.
Every day for three years, they talked about it.
How come they're not sued over it?
That's a great question.
Why are they not being sued over that hoax that they held?
They should be.
If I'm Trump, if I'm Trump right now, I'm calling my lawyers and I'm saying, you know
what?
No problem.
File a $4 billion defamation lawsuit against CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS for the Russian hoax
with the Durham report coming out.
Sue them for $4 billion, $5 billion.
He may even do $10 billion because of those every freaking day.
They did for how long, right?
But I don't think that's the direction we should go to.
But I think we're going.
I'm telling you right now, if Trump is who I think he is and the types of people he has
around him, why wouldn't he sue those guys as a defamation?
He's a counterpuncher, isn't he?
He's a New York counterpuncher.
This is a layup counterpuncher to Russia that needs to get done already because he can say
he heard the re-election.
There's so many different ways.
They heard his name.
They heard his company, his name, his family, the whole thing.
And Pat, I'm not, listen, we know that there's cheating in voting.
I don't care what anybody says.
I don't know about how grand the scale is, but there's always, there was always discrepancies.
Two things I want to ask.
Are they still going to use the Dominion?
Is Dominion still being used for the next coming elections?
Like do they, is Dominion across the board, Pat, being used all the time?
I believe so.
And there's also something to just keep tabs of.
There's another lawsuit coming down the pike from the other vote counting machine, which
is called Smartmatic.
You familiar with these guys?
Smartmatic.
Dominion was suing for what?
$1.3 billion?
$2.3 billion.
Smartmatic is suing.
Dominion was suing for $2.7 billion.
Okay.
No, Smartmatic is suing for $2.7 billion.
Dominion was, I think, $1.6 and they got half of it.
Something like that.
$1.
Yeah.
There's so many billions being flown around with this Dominion.
So there's going to be settled right there.
So Fox might end up having to pay another billion dollars for endorsing these lies.
But I heard a lot of it was them bringing on people who were saying discrepancies, especially
do anything computer.
I don't care what anybody says.
I'm not saying they did, but can you really trust it?
The integrity of just voting and mail-in ballots and all that, all that.
It's just, well, I don't know, dude.
There's a difference we learned from Phil Mudd, CIA, who is here.
He says there's a big difference between what you think and what you can prove.
100%.
And with much respect to Rudy Giuliani, because we had a great time with him.
